Estimation of hazard in regions of low seismic activity such as many parts of Western and Eastern Europe, the Urals, Western and Central Siberia is an important issue. The limited seismological coverage typical of low activity areas constrains detailed scientific studies and this reduces the quality of seismic zoning maps of many territories throughout Europe, Northern Eurasia and elsewhere. The lack of optimal techniques for estimating hazard in regions of low seismic activity such as the Western Ural region has led to re-examination of existing methods. This paper examines ways in which a wide range of geological, geophysical and seismological data, beyond those traditionally used, can be related to seismic hazard and to the estimation of the key parameter "maximum magnitude" in an integrated fashion. The focus of this technique is the identification of common characteristics of "geodynamically unstable zones". Characteristic features of geodynamically unstable zones previously identified for the West Ural region and tested by application to the Western Siberian plateau are here applied to the UK region and the model is developed through the identification of additional diagnostic characteristics. A regional model of these zones has been built within the "GEO" Geographic Information System and used to construct predictive maps of maximum magnitude for possible earthquakes in the United Kingdom. These initial results suggest that the method shows promise and is deserving of further, structured, development.
Seismic hazard, maximum magnitude, United Kingdom, Geographical Information Systems
1. Bamford, A lithosphere seismic profile in Britain; I, Preliminary results, Geophys. J. R. Astr. Soc., v. 44, no. 1, 1976.
2. Blinova, Prediction of Geodynamically Unstable Zones, 2003.
3. Blinova, Potential seismicity of the Western Siberian plateau, Patriotic Geology, no. 4, 2009.
4. Chadwick, Seismotectonics of the UK. Final report, 1996.
5. Gitis, Algorithms of prediction and synthesis of features with the use of one-dimensional piecewise linear functions, Linear and Nonlinear Methods in Pattern Recognition, Gitis V. G. ed., 1975.
6. Gitis, Fundamentals of Spatial-Temporal Prediction in Geoinformatics, 2004.
7. Musson, British earthquakes, Proc. Geol. Assoc., v. 118, 2007.
8. Sherman, The Physical Laws Governing the Development of Faults, 1977.
9. Sherman, Terms of activization of joints zones of faults, Geology and Geophysics, v. 3, 1986.
10. Sherman, Areas of Dynamic Influence of Faults Modeling Results, 1983.
11. Teferle, Crustal motion in Great Britain: Evidence from continuous GPS, absolute gravity and Holocene sea-level data, Geophys. J. Int., v. 178, no. 1, 2009.
